Ever since they changed it so I have a goddamned horizontal scroll (are they on crack?) I've only come by occasionally to look at journals.

Look, Dumbass Holdings Idiots, there's no reason whatever short of GROSS incompetence to introduce a horizontal scroll on a widescreen format notebook!! I'm all for hiring the handicapped, but you don't hire Ray Charles to be a bus driver and you don't hire the educationally handicapped to code...

Although I suspect it may be retarded PHBs than retarded coders. Someone is obviously VERY stupid. The idiotic mistakes I see should NOT happen at a so-called "nerd" site.

The TV market is bad, but the watch market is not great.

What they should be trying to crack is the in-car nav/infotainment systems - the iCarStereo. Current nav systems are somewhere between total-suckage and so-distracting-they-cause-accidents. Bluetooth pairing is painful when it even works, calling systems don't integrate with smartphone phonebooks, there is no way to share contact addresses, and the voice controls are no better than someone reading a "Car navigation is attempting to quit, cancel or allow?" dialog box. And the interfaces are so poor as to command the driver's full attention for seconds, looking for touch-screen items or clicking the right button, taking focus off the task of driving.

People would trade their old cars in for one equipped with an Apple iCarStereo if it solved those problems. A watch? It will take a lot of luck for it to be more than a fashion item that falls off the radar in a few years.

The answer depends on how that question is interpreted. No, we don't need to see such an article. Yes, such an article is necessary to drive traffic to said site, if that's your goal anyway.

It looks like the answer is "it's always a pain in the asshole" which is why OSM sucks so bad. I have a dozen hobbies already. Make it easy to add map data or GTFO. Use a typical web-of-trust model to determine which map data gets published automatically.

What does that have to do with anything? Besides absolutely nothing?

That's a stupid thing to say, and you are a stupid person for saying it. I'm saying that this doesn't necessarily result in something you'd want to watch. Someone else might well do a better job with the franchise. There's no reason to believe otherwise.

No one is impressed by disingenuous bullshit like that question, you can do better, I've seen you.

I will not buy a movie that I might otherwise have bought if I suspect that the plot has been tampered with to make it more PC.

Probably not... as noted elsewhere, only the damages on the registered and unregistered trade dress were struck, while the damages on the patent infringement were upheld. The jury verdict form doesn't break down damages by patents vs. trade dress, but there were 7 patents that Samsung was found to infringe (5, willfully, which triples the damages); and there was only one trade dress registration and one unregistered trade dress that were shown to be protectable... and many of Samsung's devices were found to infringe the patents but not either of the trade dress claims, so it's not even going to be as big as a 2/9 reduction.

For example, take the Samsung Epic 4G, which the jury counted as $130.1M in damages. It infringed all but one of the patents, but wasn't found to infringe either the unregistered or registered trade dress. So this judgement won't reduce that award by a penny. Same thing for any of the Samsung Galaxy S II models other than the Showcase, which collectively are $250M.

First, from the article:

The article is confusing two things here... First is trade dress, which is part of trademark law and covers the look and feel of something. It's under the commerce clause of the Constitution, and is codified in the Lanham Act at 17 USC 1051-1127. Trade dress is also a common law doctrine (and some states, particularly the original colonies, have their own state trademark law), and accordingly, there is such a thing as unregistered trade dress rights (there are also registered trade dress rights).
Second is design patents, which are part of patent law and also cover the look and feel of something. It's under the patent clause of the Constitution, and is codified in the patent act (35 USC 100 onwards). There is no such thing as an unregistered design patent or a "trade dress patent".

Finally, neither trade dress nor design patents can cover functionality. They only apply to aesthetic features or "surface ornamentation".

"But wait, Theaetetus," some Slashdotters protest. "Rounded corners are always functional, because otherwise, you'd cut your fingers off on the sharp edge!"
That's true, and neither the trade dress nor the design patents cover the concept of rounding a corner... Instead, they cover this specific radius of curvature. Specifically, why would you choose rounding the corner? To avoid sharp edges. Why did you choose a 1/8" radius instead of a 1/6"? An arbitrary aesthetic design choice.

Moving on to the real point here...

The jury found that Samsung infringed the (i) unregistered trade dress, (ii) registered trade dress, and (iii) design patents. With regard to the first one, the unregistered trade dress, Apple has the burden of proving that it's nonfunctional. They failed to do that, because the design as a whole offered some utilitarian advantages. So the damages placed by the jury because of (i) should be struck.

Turning to (ii) the registered trade dress, this had nothing to do with rounded corners. The registered trade dress covered the 16 icons on the iPhone's home screen. The Court held that those icons have functional features, since they tell people whether they're clicking on email or a browser. So, since they're functional, the damages placed by the jury because of (ii) should also be struck.

That leaves us with (iii), the design patents. Here, however, the jury was instructed to disregard any functional elements and focus just on the aesthetics. And here, Samsung loses, because they can't show any error in that.

So, the jury award is reduced to just what is applicable to the patents, not the trade dress.

As an aside, the court also upheld the validity of Apple's utility patents over Samsung's objections. So this is a net loss for Samsung.

Its not possible to stop murder. So we should get rid of the laws against it, why bother if it's not possible?

Just because perfection can't be achieved doesn't mean something isn't worth doing.

How many of those 4k smart tvs actually have 4k output from their internal smartass? And when they do, how often is it actually any better than upscaled 1080p? And how many people who are buying 4k TVs can't afford a SFF PC over $100?

Ah, but I might have just bought it sight-unseen. I do that sometimes. Now I know better. Will still watch it on Netflix, though.

Show me a game without bugs, especially a modern one.

So take the article as entertainment instead of a call to action. rather than your torch and pitchfork, take up your popcorn and soda.

Problem is, I already know people are fucking crazy, I come from Santa Cruz where there's a wingnut holding down every corner. (They've upped the jackbootery since the mall redesign, though, so there's a bit less of that, now you need a musical instrument in good working order... don't have to know how to play the fucker though)